Samsung introduces a new Senior-Friendly phone in Korea

Senior-Friendly or Senior-Ready you will have to choose, but Samsung’s new WISE series available in two different flavors including the Wise Classic (SHC-Z100S and Wise Modern (SHC-Z140S/SHW-A240S) features a unique design with easy to understand icons and menus, as well as everything you could expect from a Korean mobile phone including a Camera for both Photo and Video, a DMB TV tuner, Golf Game, GPS and even an FM Radio tuner on the Wise Modern version.

You have got to be kidding me, this goes against all ergonomics principles when creating things for senior citizens… Perhaps it’s time the cellphone industry takes a few cues from the car industry and the way they test if a vehicle is reasonably operable by senior citizens by placing a test driver in a suit from which he can, by I’m sure general standards, barely see, hear or feel what his touching. A few millimeters thick cellhone that needs to be flipped open is everything but geriatric friendly. Decreased efficiency and grip in their hands and fingers should be accounted for, which, even if it was taken into account when making the keys, possibly, sensitive enough, was obviously disregarded entirely for the sake of a fashion statement through an inefficient design choice. Also, if you have keys of that size in order for people to be able to read them, why do you insist on making the text of the menu one third it’s size.

The cellphone industry is notorious for spewing out garbage at an alarming rate because the devices themselves are relatively cheap to produce and even though there are hundreds, maybe thousands of models available each year, few, if any, offer any kind of progress in design and actual usability.

I find it appalling that such a horrifyingly un-thought-through machine could come out of Samsung… but I’m pretty sure that’s just me. Normally I don’t voice my opinion about this because gimmicks like these I find on design websites where designer wannabes or not-too-clever-but-good-with-3d-software design students present unremarkable and mediocre designs for something that can’t be done properly unless really well thought out. However, again, to see this coming from Samsung is just disturbing.